After Forever Ends (62 page)

“I hope she’ll be all right,” Lucy’s voice broke. “Paris is so far away.”

“She’ll be fine,” Oliver put his arm around my sister, “As long as she doesn’t call and say she’s house sitting or camping over spring break, we’ve no worries!”

“Oh mercy, Oliver! What we did to our parents!” I put a hand over my mouth so Lucy wouldn’t see me smile.

“I’d kill her!” Alexander muttered.

“Don’t say such things!” Lucy insisted. “She’d never!”

Oliver and I laughed. Shameless, we were. We had no remorse for what we’d put our parents through. When we’d married we felt it was our life to choose. Not one day after did we ever do a blasted thing that anyone told us we should. We gave each other permission not to. We didn’t listen to a word of decent advice. We were young. Love had a way of making us fearless because we knew that no matter what happened, if we fell on our face as we entered the ring or conquered the world in battle, in the end it would just be us, together. Everyone else would have buggered off before the day was through. He and I were just the way it was supposed to be. It was brilliant.

There was a two year separation between Nattie leaving us and Gryffin finishing his studies at comp. Gryffin decided that university was not for him. Instead he took a job writing for a journal and the autumn after he finished school he packed his bags and moved straight to Edinburgh to put pen to paper and make a living at it.

“If there was more opportunity in Wales, I’d stay,” He told me the morning he drove away, “I’m going to miss you, Mum. And this place. Lord Copse and Lady Folia, too. I told them I’ll be back one day and asked them to look after you. You’ll be OK, yeah?”

I smiled. “Gryff, I have a husband to look after me.”

My son laughed, “I know, but I love you, Mum. I worry.”

“I love you, too, Muffin, and don’t worry. Your dad is very good at looking after me, plus I’m pretty sturdy myself. Just go and make your dreams all come true. That’s all I want from you. Be happy.”

It’s true. It is all I ever wanted for him or for any of the children for that matter. I wanted them to go off and chase their dreams and make happy lives for themselves. But it didn’t ease the discomfort or the loneliness or the worry that followed having them go.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve never been good at letting things go. Oliver was always good at it. He’d mourn for a bit and then he’d move on somehow, but I never figured out how he did it, especially when someone I loved would pass.

I lost Duncan the summer I’d had him fifteen years, almost on the exact date he’d been delivered to me. Duncan had been lively and strong until the end, but the last few months of his life he’d started having strokes. They were small ones, ones he recovered from quickly. They’d take him off balance, but after re-hydrating him and giving him a vitamin, he’d perk up and go chasing rabbits off into the wood as if he were still a pup. Then, toward the end, I found him in the middle of a fit. When he came out of it, he walked sideways and was nearly blind. Still, he didn’t seem to be suffering and he was more than content to lie beside somebody and have his ears rubbed, so Oliver and I decided it wasn’t time to have him put down. I wasn’t ready to part with him anyway, but I was slowly working on preparing myself for the inevitable. Duncan was dying. It was only a matter of time until he did and I knew it.

I woke up in the middle of the night one night to the whispers of the elves. I lie there and listened, unable as always to make out a word that they said. Still, something told me that I needed to go into the living room, so I climbed out of my bed and walked along the cool floorboards into the front of the cabin. I heard an odd noise, a sort of raspy snort, and flipped on the light to see my little dog lying on the couch, twitching. It was obvious that there was something terribly wrong.

“Oliver!” I called as I knelt beside my dog, “Oliver! Come quick! It’s Duncan!”

Oliver was beside me in a flash. He put his hands on Duncan’s chest, turned him, and put his ear against his side. When he lifted his head, his face was stone serious. He turned his dark eyes to me and shook his head. “Hold him, Sil,” He whispered, “Sit with me on the sofa and let’s hold him.”

He didn’t need to say any more. I lifted my ancient Scottish terrier into my arms and I cradled him like a baby. I ran my hands over his smooth fur and kissed his little face. I watched my tears land in his beard and stick. I wiped them away. I watched him take short, shallow breaths. Over a few hours they gradually became more and quieter until they were faint. It took me a few minutes to realize it when he stopped breathing all together, but I know that Oliver knew it the second it happened because I heard him crying softly behind me.

“Oh my,” I whispered as I ran my hand over Duncan’s smooth fur, “He’s left us, hasn’t he? Duncan‘s gone away.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver whispered harshly. He cleared his throat, “It’s just his time.”

I put my hands over my face, but I didn’t cry right away. I couldn’t decide if it were sorrow or relief I felt that he was gone. I decided that it was both, but those are two emotions that are difficult to feel at the same time. They don’t mingle well. Ollie put his arms around me from behind and cradled me like a child, rocking me gently from side to side.

“He was so old!” I bawled. “He was the best dog ever!”

“I’m so sorry. Yes, Sil, Duncan was the best dog that ever lived. My God, we had him longer than we’ve had Caro!” He shook a little.

We sat there like that for a time, Oliver holding me and me holding my poor old dog, both of us weeping quietly so we didn’t wake the children. Finally, about the time the sun was on the rise, Oliver told me it was time to bury our pet.

I allowed him to take Duncan from my arms. He lovingly wrapped him in the blanket he often slept on by the stove and carried him out to a shady corner in the garden. Just before the tree line where the deer often stood and watched us, he began to dig a hole. I sat on the porch with a rag and I sobbed as I watched him plunge the shovel deeper and deeper into the Earth. Finally, he took our ancient Scottish terrier into his arms and he kissed him gently on his old face before he placed him in the ground. Then he removed his t-shirt and laid it across him before he began to refill the hole with dirt.

When he was finished, he came and he sat beside me and neither of us said a thing.

The children woke a few hours later. I let Oliver tell them that Duncan had found his rest. We both went with them out to the place where he was buried. We both hold them while they cried. Losing Duncan to them was the same as losing a brother. They’d never known a day without the old bloke, they’d never spent a night without him sleeping beside one of them on their bed. They’d never known death before losing him, not one of them, and it was devastating and confusing and painful. I wished that I could do something, anything, to ease their suffering, but it was impossible to do through my own grief. I felt so selfish as I sat and cried with them, but maybe I really wasn’t. Maybe I was just teaching them that it was all right to be so sad you fell apart. Maybe they needed to know that it was OK to feel bad when you lost something you loved. Maybe I taught them that in life you can’t always be strong and that there are times when it’s perfectly acceptable and even expected, that you are so overwhelmed by emotional pain that you literally cannot stand.

Oliver was more solid. Still, with a heart as hard a pudding, he teared up from time to time and fought it away. Xander came over later in the day and took him out for a pint while Lucy and I bawled softly in the kitchen. Duncan had been a part of their lives, too, and his passing hit them as well as their children. When Nigel, Natalie, and the twins arrived with them it was a whole new round of tears.

It’s funny how animals become a part of your life, real and true as if they were your own flesh and blood. Oliver had gotten me that dog as a replacement for a child we’d lost. Even though we knew full well that he could never really take the place of our Cara, he’d filled a spot that needed filling and he’d helped us both to heal in ways that maybe we wouldn’t have as completely without him. We’d loved that dog as our child, given him the same attention and care that we had all of them. It seemed so unfair that we’d all outlive him, somehow strangely unnatural, even though we knew all along that we’d lose him sooner or later. It tore us apart at the gut, though. It wasn’t much different than it would have been if someone had come along and yanked a baby from our arms. We’d felt that before.

“He was a brave little bloke,” Gryffin sniffed. He was nine years old, his cheeks were splotched as he rested his head on Oliver’s shoulder, “He was about as tall as the cabbages and he’d go chasing deer out of the birdfeeders.”

“Yeah,” Xander smiled, “Barking his brains loose while those wee little stumps he had for legs were just going and going. Imagine if he’d ever got one! Poor, brave ole li’el Dunky-doo.” He shook his head and continued. He spoke loudly as if he were reading from a book, “Fearless Dunkers, defender of bird feeders and mighty conqueror of various dinner scraps! Lord of the Food Bowl and Champion of the Water Dish…” It took me a second to realise he was being funny. “Blimey, he was so old he smelled dead a year ago!”

“He was older than that,” Oliver agreed, “And he did smell of rotten potatoes at the end.”

“’e was older dan God’s granddad!” Gryffin replied with a grin, though his eyes were still red and watery, “That li’el ole Hunky Dunky-doo!” He dropped the accent, “We were lucky to have him for so long. We really were. He actually died six years ago. If he hadn’t swallowed that battery when he ate the pink rabbit…”

“Now that’s a lad,” Oliver smiled and messed his son’s hair.

We all sat together for a while on the stoop. None of us had any inclination to eat supper.

We eventually recovered from the loss of our beloved Duncan. A few weeks later Oliver asked us if we’d like to have another pet, since all we had left were two cats and the spotted grey and white goat, Tangwystl.

“I just don’t want another dog,” I told him later in private, “Right now I want to hold on to Duncan. I don’t have the strength to love anybody new right now. It takes too much courage to love somebody. I’m just not brave enough to lose them. When I’m feeling brave, we can get another dog, but, please, Ollie, I just can‘t take it just yet…”

“Silvia,” He pulled me close, “Please don’t cry anymore. I hate it when you cry. It’s OK. We don’t have to get another dog. Not ever if you don’t want one. And I think you are very brave. You’re very brave to take the time to understand how you feel and you’re brave to say it.”

“I’m being selfish.”

“Shush. You’re the least selfish person I know. You’re being honest. Oy, come on,” he tilted my head back and smiled at me, “Stop it! Stop crying! It‘s OK. I miss him, too. We all miss him. Getting another dog isn‘t going to bring him back, yeah? And you‘re the one going to take care of a new one, so if you‘re not ready, it‘s really us being selfish wanting to drag a new one in. Shush now, Love, and let‘s go eat something sweet. Sugar fixes everything.”

It took me months to get over losing my dog. I missed him as much as I’d missed any person who’d been a part of my every day, especially the ones who I knew would never be coming back. Sometimes I’d hear his bark on the winds. Once or twice the little square we cut in the door for him to come in and out of swung as if he’d passed through it, but there was nothing there. A few times I felt him brush against my leg as I made dinner. Was it his spirit telling me he wasn’t as far away as I feared or was it just my mind trying to comfort me? I wondered, but I was still thankful for the times when it would happen. Faith, Oliver had told me long ago, was believing that something magical could happen at any moment of the day. So I believed.

Years after Duncan left us and Nigel, Caro and Nattie had begun their lives, I helped my youngest son, Warren, to pack his bags. He was heading off to study composition at the London School of Music. My youngest, my baby, was standing before me, tall and strong with his hair a mess on the top of his head, shoving the last of his blue jeans into a cardboard box.

You’d think that after having sent the others off I’d have been comfortable letting Ren go without too many words or tears, but I wasn’t. I watched him, remembering the clumsy toddler who used to pull on my skirts. I could still see that little boy lost somewhere in his lean face. He looked like Oliver. Even his hands were like his fathers, long and slender as he clicked shut his computer and slipped it into a case.

I excused myself quietly from his room and went outside where I wandered into the wood and sobbed alone for about an hour. I took another fifteen minutes after I stopped to gather myself and cool down, hoping when I returned I was not bright red. I knew I would be. Damned pale skin always gave me away, especially when I didn’t want it to.

When I came back into the garden, Annie and Bess were there with Warren, the three of them standing in the middle of the yard with some mates, laughing loudly and talking excitedly about heading off for university. I stood back and I watched them, while that lump kept returning to my chest. I remembered the days the three of them were born. Annie, now beautiful and animated in the mid-day sun, who struggled to breathe at her birth. Little Bess, who came into the world fighting and had never cowered from battle once since. And Warren, our Little Renny, who now towered above everyone and commanded the scene with his very presence.

How proud I was of them. Every one of them. And how much my heart bled that they were old enough to leave me. Where had all the time gone? When had this happened? When had they gotten so big, so strong, so independent? And what on Earth was I going to do once they were gone?

Off they went, opened their wings and flew away. Bess went to study anthropology in Cardiff. She lived at home for a few months and then got a flat with a couple of her schoolmates. She came and went as she always had, showing up mostly for suppers and holidays with loads of stories to tell us all. She was always travelling somewhere or doing something exciting, like going to Easter Island for six weeks to aid on an archaeological study.